When Elevators Fail: What Every New Yorker Should Know About Elevator Accidents and Your Legal Rights

Elevators are woven into the fabric of daily life in New York. We step into them leaving our apartments, arriving at the office, visiting a hospital, dropping a child at school, or running errands at the shopping center. Most of the time, they work without incident. But when an elevator malfunctions, the consequences can be devastating, sometimes catastrophic.

If you or someone you love has been hurt in an elevator accident, you deserve to know how these cases work, who can be held responsible, and what you should do right now to protect your rights.

The Most Common Types of Elevator Accidents

In my almost thirty (30) years representing injured New Yorkers, a handful of elevator failures come up again and again.

• Misleveling. This is one of the most common causes of elevator injuries. The elevator stops, the doors open, but the cab floor sits slightly above or below the hallway floor. Even a small height difference can send a passenger to the ground, particularly older adults, persons with limited mobility, or someone carrying a bag or pushing a stroller. What looks like a "small" lip can produce broken bones, head injuries, and serious long-term harm.

• Doors that close too quickly or fail to detect passengers. Elevator doors are supposed to be equipped with sensors or soft edges that detect a person in the doorway and reopen the doors. When those safety features fail or aren't maintained, passengers get struck, pinned, or trapped between the doors.

• Open shaft falls. The most catastrophic incidents happen when a passenger calls an elevator, hears the doors open, and steps forward only to discover there is no cab on the other side. The passenger steps into the open shaft. Depending on the height, these accidents are often fatal.

Who Is Legally Responsible When an Elevator Fails?

Elevator cases are a form of premises liability, and the starting point is almost always the building owner.

The Building Owner's Non-Delegable Duty

Under New York law, the owner of real property has a non-delegable duty to maintain the premises, including the elevators therein, in a reasonably safe condition. That phrase, non-delegable, matters. It means the owner cannot shift legal responsibility for the elevator onto someone else by signing a contract. The buck stops with the owner.

That duty includes taking reasonable steps to inspect, maintain, repair, and monitor the elevator system. New York City also has an elevator code on the books governing inspections and maintenance, and owners are required to comply with it.

An owner can be held responsible for a dangerous condition they either:

• Actually knew about and failed to correct, or

• Should have known about, what the law calls constructive notice. If a hazardous condition existed long enough that a reasonable owner would have discovered and fixed it, the owner can be held responsible.

The Elevator Maintenance Company

Most owners hire an outside elevator maintenance company to service their elevators, and that's exactly what a reasonable owner should do. But whether that company can be sued by an injured passenger depends heavily on the nature of the contract.

• A basic "oil and grease" contract covering routine lubrication and minor upkeep, generally does not create a separate legal duty to passengers. The maintenance company may owe a contractual duty to the owner, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a duty in tort to a third party who gets hurt.

• A comprehensive maintenance contract is different. When the maintenance company takes on broad responsibility for the safety and operation of the elevator, courts have found that it assumes a duty of care to passengers and can be held responsible for conditions it knew or should have known about.

Depending on the facts, a case might be brought against the owner alone, the maintenance company alone, or both.

Why "Notice" Is the Heart of an Elevator Case

Most elevator cases turn on a single question: did someone with responsibility for the maintenance of the elevator have notice of the dangerous condition?

That's why the documentary record is so important. Maintenance records, inspection records, service tickets, shutdown history, prior complaints, all of these can establish whether the owner or the maintenance company knew, or should have known, about the problem that caused the injury.

An Important Exception: Res Ipsa Loquitur

There is one powerful exception to the notice requirement: a legal doctrine called res ipsa loquitur ("the thing speaks for itself"). It applies when:

1. The incident is the type that does not ordinarily occur in the absence of negligence,

2. The instrumentality, i.e., the elevator, was in the exclusive control of the defendant, and

3. The injury was not caused by anything the plaintiff did.

A classic example is a misleveling event. A properly maintained elevator does not mislevel. If the passenger did nothing to cause it, and the elevator was under the exclusive control of the owner and maintenance company, a jury, or even the court, can infer negligence from the mere fact that the accident happened. Res ipsa loquitur has particularly strong application in elevator cases, and it's one of the most important tools available when direct evidence of notice is hard to come by.

What Damages Can an Injured Passenger Recover?

The damages available in an elevator case are the same as in other serious personal injury matters:

• Past and future pain and suffering, including loss of enjoyment of life

• Past and future medical expenses

• Past and future lost earnings

In open-shaft fall cases, there is also an argument for pre-impact terror and the conscious awareness of impending death as the passenger falls. That terror is compensable.

When an elevator accident causes a fatality, the representative of the decedent’s estate can bring a wrongful death claim. That claim can recover for the decedent's conscious pain and suffering before death, as well as the pecuniary losses, i.e. the financial support and services the decedent would have provided to surviving family members.

An Important Practical Point: Evidence Disappears Fast

Here is what I want every reader to take away: in elevator cases, the evidence you need to prove your case can vanish within days or weeks.

• The elevator itself gets repaired and placed back in service before any meaningful investigation can be done.

• Surveillance footage gets overwritten on a rolling cycle.

• Maintenance logs get updated and changed.

Once that elevator is fixed, the physical condition that caused the injury may be gone forever. The mechanical evidence that would have told us exactly what failed and why gone.

That's why prompt action matters so much in these cases. An attorney experienced in elevator litigation can move quickly to:

• Retain a qualified elevator expert to inspect the elevator and its components before it is repaired and placed back in service

• Preserve maintenance, inspection, and service records

• Obtain surveillance footage from inside the cab and in the surrounding hallways before it's overwritten

• Obtain Department of Buildings inspection records

• Identify and interview witnesses while memories are fresh

The sooner an investigation begins, the more ammunition you have when it's time to prove your case.

If You or Someone You Love Has Been Injured in an Elevator

Elevator accidents are not ordinary slip-and-fall cases. They involve complicated questions about ownership, maintenance contracts, building codes, and engineering and the evidence has a short shelf life. If you've been hurt, the most important thing you can do is reach out to a qualified personal injury attorney as soon as possible, so that critical evidence can be preserved while it still exists.

At Kramer, Dunleavy & Ratchik, PLLC we represent New Yorkers who have been seriously injured by the negligence of others, including in elevator accidents throughout New York City and New York State. If you have questions about an incident involving you or a loved one, we're here to help.

Jonathan R. Ratchik is a partner at Kramer, Dunleavy & Ratchik. His practice focuses on representing New Yorkers who have been injured due to the negligence and wrongdoing of others, helping them recover compensation for their pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, and economic loss.